A story in USA Today this week highlighted a problem facing the United States Secret Service: It doesn’t have enough money. The article suggested this was in large part because of excessive travel by President Donald Trump and his family, who are among the 42 people under Secret Service protection in his White House.
The truth is, while Donald Trump’s presidential travel is indeed one factor straining the agency, it is not the only one. The problem is a confluence of issues: Statutory mandates that cap salary and overtime, an increase in the number of protective assignments, and a diminishing number of agents.
Until Congress and the Secret Service address these issues with rational solutions, we will be hearing about the overtaxed agency into the next presidential administration and beyond.
Let’s begin with pay: A federal restriction sets a pay cap for Secret Service agents. This means an agent’s compensation (base salary plus overtime pay including Law Enforcement Availability Pay) cannot exceed a particular amount annually, currently around $160,000.
In a statement this week, the Secret Service said about 1,100 employees will be affected by the caps this year, and admitted this is an “ongoing and serious problem.” The effect on agents who provide direct protection to the President is significant.
It is simple math: A senior agent, such as one assigned to the President, has a larger base salary, thus the difference between that base salary and pay cap is smaller. However, that same agent is tasked with longer hours, and travel that is often eligible for overtime. The compensation for the agent’s overtime often surpasses the cap, which results in an elite Secret Service agent not being compensated for overtime.
In my own Secret Service career, there were numerous instances when I worked a significant amount of overtime without seeing any payment. This factor alone has caused a low morale within the agency.
If we want to fix this issue, we should not focus on this particular President’s travel, but rather the Secret Service’s ability to manage a workforce effectively.
With 6,800 officers and agents carrying out the integrated investigative and protective missions of the Secret Service, there is no reason for 1,100 among them to work beyond a statutory pay cap.
The answer here may seem obvious: The Service needs to rethink the way it manages its available manpower to meet the demands placed on the agency without working any individual agents beyond the agency’s ability to pay them.
Implementing this solution is complicated by the fact that the Secret Service is operating with a depleted workforce. In April, a New York Times article reported “the agency is down about 250 special agents” from its manpower at the start of the Obama administration.
This has caused an operational strain (fewer agents means longer hours for each of them), and it has also placed the Secret Service dead last, at number 305, in the overall rankings of the best places to work index within the federal government.
The Secret Service needs to do some serious introspection as to its ability to continue with an integrated investigative and protective mission model. With a changing global threat landscape, which places new demands on the agency, it may be forced to give up most or all its investigative responsibilities, which include enforcing counterfeiting laws and safeguarding US financial systems, and focus on one core competency: protection.